An acclaimed French cellist had to perform without his beloved instrument last night after leaving it in the back of a yellow cab Saturday.

Eric Picard, the lead cellist with the visiting Orchestre de Paris, borrowed a friend’s cello for the second of two weekend concerts at the Guggenheim Museum.

“This is horrible,” he said, after using an inferior instrument rather than his trusty 1832 Vuillaume – which is valued at $100,000.

“I have played that cello for 20 years,” he said. “It is my life.”

Taxi and Limousine Commission officials will reach out to the city’s taxi fleets this morning in hopes it will be returned, said Commissioner Matthew Daus.

Efforts to find the cello yesterday were complicated because Picard did not take a receipt from the driver – whom he described only as a man of Middle Eastern descent.

Picard had placed the cello in the trunk after leaving the Guggenheim at around 11 p.m. and forgot to retrieve it at his destination on Amsterdam Avenue.

“I never usually put the cello in the trunk,” he said. “But the taxi was full. I realized almost immediately, but the driver was gone.”

A veritable orchestra has left cellos in yellow cabs over the years. In 2001, soloist Lynn Harrell left behind his 328-year-old, $4 million cello. Two years earlier, Yo-Yo Ma forgot his $2.5 million instrument.

Both were quickly recovered because the musicians took receipts from the drivers.